Tony (Anthony) Magan (15 December 1910 – 4 July 1981) was an Irish
republican and chief of staff of the Irish Republican Army (IRA).
Biography[edit]
Magan was born on 15 December 1910.[1] He was a son of farmer James
Magan and his wife Elizabeth Foley, of Kilmore, Dunshaughlin, County
Meath.[2]
Magan was interned in the Curragh during the Irish Emergency (during
the Second World War). In March 1946, he was arrested along with a
number of other IRA men in the Ardee Bar, Dublin. Jailed, he was
released in December 1946 along with Micksie Conway. Both men resumed
their attempts to reorganise the IRA.
A lifelong bachelor and County Meath farmer, Magan sold his farm and
devoted all his time and money to the IRA. He was appointed IRA chief
of staff by the IRA Army Executive at its convention in September
1948. The IRA had almost been destroyed in the 1940s and Magan
immediately set out to reorganise the political and military wings of
the Republican Movement, namely the IRA and Sinn Féin, along with
Michael Traynor, Paddy McLogan, and Tomás Mac Curtain.
Magan was not a popular choice for the position and several members of
his previous IRA Army Council were not impressed by him but did not
oppose his nomination outright. Magan drew support chiefly from Dublin
delegates, who felt that "the Army needed a steel core and that Magan
could supply it".
Magan was a determined physical force traditionalist. According to J.
Bowyer Bell, he "wanted to create a new Army, untarnished by the
dissent and scandals of the previous decade", with "no shadow of a
gangster gunman, no taint of communism, but a band of Volunteers
solely dedicated to reuniting Ireland by physical force". Tim Pat
Coogan describes him as "priest-like - who had given all his money,
time and thought to the IRA, a deeply religious man of the old-guard
school of Irish Catholicism [and] when he was again interned in the
Curragh during the 1950s Border Campaign he organised a flourishing
branch of the Legion of Mary".
At the 1950 Sinn Féin Ardfheis, Magan was elected honorary joint
secretary of the party. Coogan recounts that Magan's Sinn Féin
submitted key political and economic policies for review by friendly
clergy, "to ensure that they contained nothing contrary to Catholic
teaching". In May 1951, the IRA leadership established a Military
Council to draft an overall plan for the Republican Movement as a
whole. Its members were Magan (as Chief of Staff), Tomás Mac Curtáin
(as chairman of the Army Council), Pádraig Mac Lógáin (as president
of Sinn Féin and chairman of the IRA Army Executive), a former
British army officer with World War II experience service who was an
expert on guerrilla warfare, and one other person.
In 1953, Magan played a role in organising and carrying out the
Felstead arms raid. Unlike Seán Mac Stiofáin, Cathal Goulding, and
Manus Canning, later jailed for the raid, Magan evaded arrest and
managed to return safely to Ireland.
Magan was chief of staff and the commencement of the IRA's Border
Campaign, codenamed Operation Harvest, which began on 11 December
1956.
He resigned from the Republican Movement in 1962 in a dispute over the
relationship between the IRA and Sinn Féin.
Magan, who lived at 45 Lower Dodder Road in Rathfarnham, Dublin,
subsequently worked as a taxi driver. He died on 4 July 1981 at Meath
Hospital.[3] On 8 July 1981 he was buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery,
Dublin.[4] A lifelong bachelor, he was survived by his sisters, nieces
and nephews.
References[edit]